oh for the first time in the history of wal-mart workers are walking out of their jobs and into a new battle fighting for improve working conditions but as temporary nonunion employees who work for one of the largest most powerful companies in the world will their battle be all uphill are jihads for the picket line to find out. if you were here. in a magician suit and would be hard worker. came out having first read of the ballots and one would you trust that process in the land of free and fair elections not all

ballots are treated equally a system full of old technology and faulty paper trail has put a dark cloud over the way voting is conducted in many parts of this country where the presidential elections right around the corner will take a critical look at the process. plus do you ever get overwhelmed by all those release forms doctors make you sign before a check up well you might want to take a closer look at what you're putting your john hancock on before you agree turns out the florida police are trying to break through a doctor patient privilege with clarity with cleverly worded to pull release forms . it's friday october fifth five pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for is out and you're watching r t. let's begin with a story that has been picking up steam over the last few days and valving one of the largest most powerful companies in this country i'm talking about wal-mart.

target lovers you want to grab a read to what happens if she does find the lower everglades price somewhere else all matter right here so what you learn today every dollar counts and i get to bring more home to my family that's the walmart low price guarantees see for yourself how much you can save you so wal-mart logo is save money live better but according to some wal-mart employees that's something that might apply to customers but does not apply to them so they're speaking out against what they call horrendous working conditions but when they did here's what happened. pastor who came to support those workers in their act of civil disobedience being arrested if you take a look you can also see several members of the swat team there as well and this is just one of many protests that have been staged over the last week involving people who work for wal-mart subcontractors have walked off from doing their jobs join the

picket lines and here's what workers are asking for in a nutshell better working conditions many of them work in extreme temperatures some say even things like shin pads and dust masks could make their lives a whole lot easier like the hours they were told they'd get and they'd like to know that if they do speak out that they won't be retaliated against right now that is not the case now remember these are not union workers most of them are temporary workers what does this mean it means they make low wages they have no met no benefits in many cases they're put in dangerous working environments to speak more about this i was joined by our window he first started explaining which wal-mart employers are taking part in this protest. but we have employees in several categories the video that we saw there in illinois involves warehouse employees that are contracted to companies who work with wal-mart that protests that we saw

in illinois it comes right on the heels of a similar warehouse protest that we saw here in southern california where workers walked off the job and went on strike for an entire week marching from riverside all the way to los angeles demanding these very rights and really these demonstrators stray sions go back several weeks here in southern california where workers and other unions have shown solidarity with these warehouse worker unions trying to let wal-mart know that they're tired of working under these conditions which they consider to be just inhumane now if you want to say we reached out to wal-mart we also reached out to some of these subcontractors and right now that the reaction that we've gotten mostly over the phone is no comment i never knew we were able to speak to some of these workers what are they telling you that's where i was i mentioned a strike here in southern california months the warehouse workers did recently and

yet some of them when they say that they returned to work their concerns over safety were not they were not met and we're hearing some of the same problems from people actually working inside the retail stores now so a lot of them talked about just the lack of benefits and the low wages that really makes it difficult for them to survive and to feed their families some of the people that we talked to today though told us that the sort of actions that we've been seeing around the country have really emboldened some of them to really organizing come together. we feel like we don't have a place we don't have a voice and we have nothing and i feel that by extension and being who we are we are a huge family are these issues the family it's not just people sign up for the right it's a family for the right you know i mean almost. like we were slaves was basically the bottom line because we are pursuing this goes. for them to stop this.

union organizers and other community leaders have. collective signatures speaking out against wal-mart hoping to encourage other workers to unionize but so far wal-mart has been very resistant to any efforts and some of these workers say that they even been retaliated against for trying to unionize in their own stores well certainly it's no secret ramon that wal-mart is not in favor of unions there's been a number of cases and i think we have some video of a protest from last year back in march of two thousand and eleven video during the whole walmart versus duke supreme court case this is anti discrimination case a lot of women who work for wal-mart they say that you know they were discriminated against and the u.s. supreme court sided with wal-mart in this gender discrimination suit another example though in canada workers out of quebec store tried to form a union and what did wal-mart do well they closed that store and they later just

opened a new one not too far away. ramon here's here's the deal i mean it seems that wal-mart is sort of the all powerful company. and what they say and it's hard to argue with this is that if they have to pay union wages if they have to update their stores you know and all the working conditions that they're not going to be able to pass those low price savings to all the customers but what do you think ramona in your research i mean is there a middle ground here. no you know that's the argument made very commonly that if they do pay their workers more they would have to raise prices but the issue here that many of these employees want to point out is that the same sort of value that they're trying to pass on to their customers they really don't treat their employees with that sort of value and also they want to point out that in their view that opening up of these mega stores in places like downtown los angeles is

going to really hurt the local economy and the local businesses. and really even though it does seem like an uphill battle as you mentioned while wal-mart does have quite a bit of political clout that doesn't have deterred any of these people who are trying to organize and who are continuing to plan several demonstrations throughout the fall and throughout the winter knowing that wal-mart's big season is the holiday season they want to defend people know what is going on behind those doors absolutely really interesting i did a story recently ramon about grocery stores in america was was shocked to find out that the second most frequented place for groceries shopping for americans is actually these wal-mart supercenter so really interesting what's going on you keeping your eyes out there for us our t. correspondent rym uncle and oh all right everyone we're less than five weeks away from election day and you know most of us when we go to the polls we're going to vote on a touch screen voting machine will finish up and we'll leave with no receipt no

proof that who and what we voted for was actually counted so we thought we'd take a look at the election system from a technology standpoint and ask this question how free and how fair our elections are to correspond honest going to take something for luck. the u.s. a beacon of democracy and an example to be followed by the rest of the world one big source of pride is its fundamental concept of free and fair elections american elections are a disgrace it's like looking into the kitchen of a first class restaurant and losing an appetite at what you see because we have an election system a voting system that is completely nontransparent an opinion shared by many political experts and educators if you were to hand. in a magician suit and went behind the curtain came out having first read the ballots to tell you why would you trust that process your saturday and that process largely

to blame is the outdated outrunning voting system in the states where all they have is electronic voting it could be a real problem. if you don't have some other type of backup source to verify the vote count. it's it could be a problem read friedman is an independent award winning blogger who has covered the us election system for years he calls the problem a pandemic and says change is long overdue every single state in the union uses electronic voting a third of the voters this year will vote on one hundred percent on verifiable touch screen voting systems electronic voting systems. the rest of the country by and large will vote on paper ballots but those paper ballots are also counted by electronic systems unless you can see inside a computer there's no way to know if those computers tallied those ballots correctly several experiments conducted on electronic voting machines have proven

that simple keystrokes and some knowledge of science and computers could flip results the signature inside the machine will clear the incorrect in numbers insert the correct in numbers experts say the accuracy of the vote count even with people a trail is a myth in the ninety nine percent why. percent of the cases those ballots never see the light of day they're never examined never recounted basically american elections at this point have virtually zero claim on public confidence and legitimacy the rules and specific ations of how lections are held very locally and state by state four thousand different counties each of them use a different type of system a different type of voting system each of them have different flaws different vulnerabilities one particular company that makes electronic voting machines in the west has earned a dubious reputation for unverifiable results as records vanish into thin air i go to an a.t.m. and it's a double machine i get a confirmation slip and i go around the corner to vote and i you know make my vote

and there's no record of people don't other voting machine production companies are also known to have strong partisan affiliations they are not accountable to any voters. they are not just private but but private and extreme in their political sympathies democrats don't actually win that many elections to be precise democrats almost never win close elections. and the trick therefore is to see to it that a race is or looks close improving the election process in this digital age doesn't appear to be on anyone's agenda including barack obama's our president who won't talk ever about election fraud and denies that it has ever happened in when you know members of his own party have been the victims of it and while the number of reported flaws grows with each passing election over the past decade since two thousand when i think congress was pretending to want to make things better what

has happened is things have gotten much much worse it appears stealing an election in the us maybe a candidates certain way to secure and when it's easy as one two three in this digital age of smartphones tablets and satellite navigation systems american voters will head to the polls this november to cast their ballots using antiquated and unreliable voting machines machines that will ultimately determine who will lead this nation in much need of its own repairs and as they say pretty new york. so are elections actually able to be rigged i'm joined now by investigative journalist brad friedman he's behind brown blog dot com brad four and a half weeks out what do you think voters should be most aware of regarding this matter. what they need to be aware of is that these machines count our votes inside the computer we can't see them and there we remain the same serious concerns that frankly we have had now for eight years and that almost nothing been done

about that effect you know we're talking right now we try to do it by skype but the computers failed so we're using the phone here but magine if the computers fail on election day that happens all the time the system simply fail and often we have no idea if they actually worked or didn't work when the election results are announced on election night i mean i think it's a really good point brad this is nothing new that we're dealing with we've seen this going on i covered this back as a young reporter back in two thousand and four why is it you know when you're three research that very little has been done to deal with what is a really big problem. i had actually trouble hearing that question i heard you say you were a young reporter in two thousand and four i was right there with you and all of these years later so little has been done about this issue and it's unclear why it is i know that republicans rather like the system that is on till their own ox gets

gored pun intended i think and democrats feel largely the same way many of them that i talk to say well you know if it was good enough to get me elected then i guess these machines work just fine they're also concerned about being tarred as conspiracy theorists and i'm not entirely sure why because you know the fact of the matter is if you look at for example touch screen voting ask any election official who uses a touch screen voting machine if they have any evidence that any vote ever cast on their touch screen voting machine was ever recorded as per the voter's intent during an election for any candidate or any initiative. we won't be able to give you any evidence this is still one hundred percent faith based voting all of these years later yeah it's really interesting and you know this is by the way for those of us on a stasis report the same brad that was in that report during the last hour i

interviewed a security analyst who proposed you know when we go to voting booths in the future using ice cans it seems like a safer way but that seems a little bit difficult to update all the machines but let's go with something very simple brad something what about just having a receipt come out of the voting machine after you vote you get two you put one in a box in case there's questions and you hold on to the other one why has this not happened that's a problem we actually we don't want to do that we have a secret ballot here in the united states and it should remain that way and if you give a receipt to a voter showing how it is that they voted that makes it very easy to buy and sell votes employers can intimidate but it doesn't have to say their name on it what if it's just kind of a random number that couldn't be associated. but you will let's say you work for me you're one of my employees and i tell you that if you don't come in on wednesday and show me that you voted the way i wanted you to vote you will be fired or let's

say that i'm offering twenty dollars for everyone who comes in and shows me a receipt that they voted the way i want them to vote there's a good reason we don't get a receipt when we go to vote that's why it's so important for the citizenry to be able to over see the counting and right now we cannot oversee the counting when the counting is done in side a computer system and if i could christine just for a second speak to that. supposedly expert you had on talking about ice cans or something look the concern is not voter fraud the voters are doing fine leave them alone this is not a question of you know matching up and i scan you know to make sure the voter is who they say they are something. silly like this this is a matter of the citizens citizens being able to oversee their own election so that we have the self governance that is required under our current constitution the only way that i have been able to find to do that is to hand count paper ballots on

election night at the precinct with all results reported right there right then and there at the precinct before those ballots are moved anywhere it's one hundred percent transparent it's very very difficult to game and frankly in the places that do do it say forty percent or so of new hampshire still dip that way their results are as accurate and as fast often even faster than the votes that are counted by computer tele so you don't think it would take too long because of course in the days of the twenty four hour news network we like our results immediately but if you don't think it would take too long i'm with you i even think you know the scan trons that we used to use back in school good work but one more question for you brad while i've got you on the line here and that is sort of the bigger picture where we're seeing not just these technologically questionable machines we're also living in a time where voter id laws are being passed in multiple states and we're seeing

a shift in the way voters are treated sort of bigger picture here what's what's at stake yeah well very quickly the scams runs we already use those in two thirds of the country those systems are the problems because the scam terrans as you call them the optical scan systems get it wrong all the time just last march in palm beach county two different losing candidates were named the winners in those races and we only found out because we bothered to examine at least a few of those paper ballots after the election and found out the computers had a totally wrong those same systems are used all across the country as to the polling place photo i.d. restriction talking about this is a very. specific effort by the republican party to keep democratic leaning voters from voting period it has nothing to do with voter fraud it doesn't deter you know there's only been ten in ten known instances in person polling place fraud

in all fifty states since the year two thousand right ten out of hundreds of millions of votes cast so the notion that. keeping hundreds of thousands from voting because they don't have a photo id in order to stop maybe ten instances is absurd the republicans know it and that's exactly why they're passing these laws and frankly that's exactly why the courts are rejecting the absolutely right investigative journalism brad freeman you seem to be a man with a plan make sure to check out his blog at broadwater dot com thanks for being on the show thanks christine. well it's a little known story out of florida but it's really interesting it turns out administrators with the sarasota sarasota county sheriff's office have done something unprecedented they're taking measures to try to give patients at hospitals and doctors offices to give up their constitutional right to privacy by

having doctors slip in a form i mean you know how it goes you go to the doctor's office and especially if it's a new doctor there is a mountain of paperwork a lot of it is simple stuff your name your date date of birth social security number how many drinks you have a week and then there's often a list of questions about your medical history your family's medical history but then you know by the time you get to page seven or page eight you just want to see the doctor so you fill out the forms as fast as you can and you read and you sign but apparently this page that was reportedly added to a pile of paperwork for many florida patients said this it said the undersigned knowingly involuntary agrees to the release of any and all protected health information for any and all purposes regardless of whether any particular purpose is mentioned including but not limited to all prescriptions including drug dosage and quantity all notes regarding past present and future treatment or examination

any record or document considered a medical record record under florida or federal law now most of you should be familiar with the federal medical privacy law called hipaa this form i've got it right here this form makes hipaa no and void and ministers were hoping it would help them fight a rampant prescription drug epidemic by finding out which patients are getting prescribed which drugs my gregg's is an associate editor for reason magazine and he's here to talk more about this and i should mention mike so far the story came out but no doctors have turned in these signed forms but what is the bigger picture here the bigger picture here is that a year ago the office of national drug. control policy under president obama released a strategy for combating the procrit prescription drug epidemic one of the their goals and they didn't spell it out to the extent that we're seeing in sarasota but one of their goals was to find ways for state and local law enforcement to get around what the administration called legislative and legal barriers to

investigation one of these things are state laws local laws and also federal laws to protect patient privacy so i don't think that there's any push from washington but i think it did send the message to local law enforcement agencies go ahead and figure out what you can do to sort of speed up the process of an investigation if you get the sense that a local pharmacy is giving is selling too many or filling too many prescriptions for hydrocodone oxy cutting you know they could take a while to get a subpoena it could take a while to get a warrant so they asked doctors fill out these forms that give these forms their patients basically signing away all their medical records so the police officer could then come to a doctor and say you know for any patient who signed this form we would like their records you know so there but obviously doctors are saying no there's a no because they think it by lisa patient privacy but this also exposes doctors in a big way because then they're also going to be telling law enforcement what they've been doing in terms of medical treatment. and you know i should say there's

actually not a lot but some support for what the sheriff's office is doing because what they're they say they're doing is they're trying to deal with i guess last year there were more than one hundred overdose deaths sarasota and manatee counties in florida so what they're trying to do is find out more about these patients who could possibly be breaking the law doing what's called doctor shopping getting rather simple doctors to give them multiple prescriptions talk a little bit about this the fact that a lot of people are saying hey we think that this is a good thing that the sheriffs are doing that right i mean there are a lot of drug warriors and supporters of strict drug policy you think it's going to do this and i don't ever want to give the impression i think the that it's not a big deal that people are dying of overdose or that you have people driving under the influence of oxy code in this kind of stuff but the full push if you look at the big picture you have the d.a. shutting down pharmacies you have the federal government saying that doctors who prescribe more than twenty pain medications a day and if you look at sarasota county it's got a lot of old people

a lot of slip and fall accidents not to really get you know medical marijuana which can also be used to treat chronic pain is illegal in florida and in the majority of the united states so if you're looking at what can you prescribe someone who's got a broken hip or just had knee replacement surgery you're looking really at only heavy duty pharmaceutical such as hydrocodone and oxy contin these kinds of things so this pushes on two things one is made doctors terrified for their profession it is killing businesses by showing them pharmacies and it is preventing access to pain medication and i think when you look at this push like this is obviously the least bad thing this form in the sense that it's you know there is something very experienced about the fact that it doesn't say that it's for law enforcement purposes right and i think law enforcement even where they had a hand in sort of drawing it up yeah they did i mean they they wrote these and then they handed them to doctors and this is probably the least bad thing we've seen in terms of the coming down coming in and shutting down of pharmacies and there are towns in florida and all throughout. the southern united states they don't have more than one pharmacy or two pharmacies so if the da comes in and shuts down an

entire c.v.s. pharmacy you know i mean you're looking at an entire town saying they can't get prescriptions filled for anything now you're saying a lot of people who are not abusing the system exactly end up getting the ins and we know the answer there's a small number of people who are abusing the system in terms of what they're doing with doctors what they're doing with pharmacies the number of people who may be abusing the drugs themselves is larger obviously than the people who are sort of working the system but if you have one hundred over to assess in sarasota county that doesn't mean a hundred people were doctor shopping it could mean five people were doctor shopping right but it ends up it could end up exposing hundreds or thousands of innocent patients to totally unwarranted you know government surveillance of their medical records which may you know i don't and there's this idea if you're not doing anything wrong what do you have to hide well it's not it's not their business you know if i'm seeking therapy for what if i'm seeking treatment for drug abuse or

you know what if i just don't the government doesn't need to know which is why we have hipaa. and again this is a small number of people and one of the doctors mentioned interviewed by the herald tribune in sarasota so that he makes patients sign a form that if they try to doctor shop with him he can turn them in right that doesn't mean he has any other i don't lose his preeti i think i'm just saying you know this is we should be encouraging healthy doctor patient relationships not basically saying that doctors don't know well enough and that the law enforcement agencies should be able to come in and police that relationship so again you know i did print out this form and if you take a look i mean you guys probably can't see it but the font size here is very small and it's you know after you feel that all those other forms it's a whole lot to go through and read but the bottom line is mike the responsibility come down to the patient itself. before you sign yeah absolutely absolutely and the thing is i think patients in sarasota county this is getting a lot of play down there as most you know prescriptions pill stories doing for. they know more now they know better at the same time i want to know i want to know

if my doctor is clued in with a law enforcement agency you know the story reported that most of these doctors aren't and not a single want to start in a form we already have to worry about doctors colluding with their scripts and drug companies and then i have to worry about my telecom company you know colluding with the government giving over my records like i just want to know i want to know so yes there's due diligence on the part of the patient always and all contract or all disputes there's do diligence on the part of the signer but i also want to know you know it's really interesting because this article as you said has gotten a lot of play in florida it's also sort of bringing up questions about privacy rights of patients some doctors have said you know they want to call authorities or whomever the appropriate place is to say hey i'm concerned that my patient is in fact doctor shopping but i as a doctor can't do that because it goes against privacy or right against hipaa absolutely which is why i think there was a great example of a doctor saying you know doctors who treat a lot of people for paying i think maybe they should have the option you know to

say to the patient if you want to see treatment here you know these are the rules for seeking treatment at this practice and one of them is if i prescribe you you know an oxy coating prescription a month's worth on the first of the month and you come in on the fifth and say you need another one. you know we're going to sit down have a discussion about terminating your treatment or possibly you know getting the government involved but again that's you know these are i think these particulars can be worked out between doctors and patients i don't think doctors should relinquish that sort of authority to i mean you know there are enough doctors out there who don't know what they're talking about unfortunately i don't want a law enforcement officer who has no medical training involved in determining whether or not i'm getting the best possible treatment all right certainly and interesting discussion and just an interesting story overall associate editor for reason greg thanks for being on the show thank you and for us here that's going to do it but for more on the stories we covered and go to you tube dot com slash r.t.m. america is.